If length is the criteria for this year’s Man Booker Prize, then at nearly 900 pages Paul Auster’s “4321” justifiably is on the Long list. Otherwise this coming of age third person narrative that chronicles post-World War II American history through the eyes of a liberal Jewish boy growing up in the Metro New York City area is not deserving. is journeyman prose and unrealistic protagonist(s) with literary aspirations, is complex, but unsympathetic.

The twist is that there are actually four principal protagonists intertwined with essentially the same ensemble of characters, each with slightly different life paths. If you had not read any reviews of this book, the book jacket, or the last six pages of the book, you would think that the editor and author missed a lot of logical and factual inconsistencies throughout the book. In the novel there are no clear lines of demarcation between each variation of the lives of the principal character, Archie Ferguson. Sequential flashbacks complicate the reading of this novel. Neither the experimental nature of the organization of the novel, nor the theme that each of our lives can take different paths, warrant the inclusion of this novel on the Long List.

For baby boomers who have lived through the American history that the lives of Archie Ferguson trace there is no new information to learn from this book.

At about half the length the book may be tolerable. For me it was a waste of time.

Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton is the basis for the highly acclaimed Broadway hip-hop musical “Hamilton”. Before this musical I thought Hamilton was the most underrated Founding Father of the United States and felt that a hip-hop version of his life would not do him justice. I turned down tickets for the show when it was in preview. I have not seen the show to take its measure, but it did revive Hamilton in the minds of America; encourage knowledge of history that is lacking among young people; and retained A.H. on U.S. currency. I found it reprehensible that our political correctness would remove the founder of the U.S. Treasury as the face of the $10 bill. Hamilton’s contributions were immense: co-author of The Federalist Papers; First Secretary of the Treasury; establishment of coinage in the U.S.; developer of the U.S.’ first tax and budget systems; creator of a National Bank that permitted borrowing; originator of the Customs Service and the Coast Guard; and interpreter of the Constitution’s “implied powers” that was reinforced by Supreme Court Justice Marshall and subsequently used by President Jefferson to support the Louisiana Purchase, even he opposed Hamilton’s interpretation before becoming President. He was also the first true immigrant Founding Father, and one from the lower class (and viewed as a bastard).

Like many biographies, this one does put a gloss on the subject. Nonetheless, Chernow does address Hamilton’s jingoistic executive approach to power, which I had not realized about him. I also held Washington in higher regard after reading this biography. Washingotn was never considered a great general, nor the intellectual equivalent of his peers. His skill his ability to read people and situations extremely well and balance the partisans that surrounded him. His first administration appears to be the Hamilton Administration as he supported what Hamilton devised, while holding him in check. In this regard modern Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan seem to be comparable but lesser equivalents.

The highly partisan and abusive nature of politics at that time make our current depraved situation seem tame. The Louisiana Purchase as a political ploy of Jefferson to increase the power of the slave holding South prompts New England States (Federalists) to consider seceding. It is not the civics lesson you learned about the Louisiana Purchase`. While slavery was clearly an issue at the Constitutional Convention, how emotionally charged it was early in our history was surprising to me, considering abolitionists (of which Hamilton was one) were not strong in the “North”.

The reason why Hamilton decided to duel Burr is peculiar and remains a mystery. By even current standards it would hardly constitute slander and could easily have been remedied. Hamilton and Burr careers had waned and neither was in good financial condition (Burr was insolvent). Even considering pride, the decision is inexplicable to me, as Hamilton was one of New York’s best lawyers.

Burr was a capable lawyer and his statesmanship was evident in the politically motivated impeachment trial of Justice Chase. Burr effectively saved the independence of the Federal Judiciary to the disappointment of President Jefferson. Most interesting, Burr as Vice President presided over the trial in the Senate at a time that we was indicted and wanted for murder in NY and NJ for the killing of Hamilton in the duel.

This book is over 700 pages, so it cannot be digested in one read. It is a mixture of primary and secondary sources and encourages reading of other Founding Father biographies to compare different interpretations.

If you go to the Polish Consulate in New York City there is a statue of a man sitting on a bench. Other cities have similar statutes. The statute is as gaunt as Jan Karski was in life. I see him, Old World, patrician in physical demeanor, ramrod erect, sometimes smoking a cigarette holding in the old fashion Eastern European manner. Jan Karski: a name de guerre. The Christian name was Jan Kozielewski. A Polish diplomat by training. By circumstance a prisoner turned courier. A messenger between the Polish Underground and the Polish Government in Exile and its Western allies during World War II. I knew this man. I never knew him.

I visualize him from memory. I hear his high-pitched, snorted laugh. I remember nothing about what he said. The laugh lingered. It always made me feel that this man had been abused. He was my professor in college. The laugh was a source of ridicule among his students. He taught was one of those comparative “something” classes that you were required to take at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. He never spoke about himself. Never about the War. It was only after leaving Georgetown that I learned who he was. A man who bore witness.

“The Messenger” is an odd book. As a biography it reviews Mr. Karski’s participation in the film “Shoah”. It reveals that only a few years after I graduated Mr. Karski was coaxed to participate in the film. To tell his story again. His silence since the War was not reserved to his students. He chosed to stay quiet after the War.

The second part of the biography, is a summary of Mr. Karski’s memoir “Story of a Secret State” that was published in 1944. It was a best seller.

The last part of the book is fiction. The author conveys what he believes are Mr. Karski’s thoughts through a first person monologue. This is the most interesting part of the book, because he universalize the Holocaust. In the monologue Mr. Karski presumably rejects the Poles as being more anti-Semitic than people of other countries: the Soviets, the British, the French, the Americans. Purportedly they are demonized as a distraction from Western complicity. Historically he stands apart. He has been honored at Yad Vashem as one of the “Righteous among the Nations.” He had been in the Warsaw ghetto and gained entrance into one of the camps to accurately report to the Allies what was happening. He had been caught and tortured by the Nazis and escaped. He feared the Soviets, as he feared the Nazis. The monologue raises the Katyn massacre by Stalin’s NKVD during early 1940. Four thousand of Poland’s intelligentsia were taken to the forest near Smolensk, executed and dumped in a mass grave. This message is not meant to detract from the horror of the Holocaust. Mr. Karski was virulently anti-Communist. A purpose is to address the human condition. The commandment from the Holocaust according to Israeli scholar Yehuda Bauer is:

“Thou shalt not be a perpetrator.
Thou shalt not be a victim.
And above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

The latter is Jan Karski’s message. Its historical retelling is more powerful than fiction. Ad advertisement in the February 16, 1943 edition of the New York Times is quoted. It is in the fiction part of the book. It reads:

The copy in part says, “Romania is tired of killing Jews. It has killed one hundred thousand of them in two years. Romania will now give Jews away for practically nothing”. The text notes that American politicians have done nothing and that Romania upon payment will deliver the 70,000 Jews in concentration camps to Palestine.

I figure this is dramatic license and research the purported event. It is not fiction. Romania had approached the U.S. State Department in advance of publication, but the State Department did not choose to do anything. Karski had already met with the British in 1942 and met with Roosevelt in July of 1943. What was transpiring was known. The ad was published by Ben Hecht, a non-religious Jew, turned Irgun supported and anti-Zionist, to dramatize the plight of European Jews. The American Jewish Congress (and similarly The Jewish Agency in London) responded at the time “The American Jewish Congress, dealing with the matter in conjunction with recognized Jewish organizations, wishes to state that no confirmation has been received regarding the alleged offer of the Romanian Government to allow 70,000 Jews to leave Romania. Therefore no collection of funds would seem justified.” Who knew what and when remains in question, although Mr. Hecht, in his book “Perfidy” claimed complicity of established Jewish organizations in intentional inaction.

We are all bystanders to atrocities. It is not that we don’t care, it is self-preservation and the absence of shared condition. On a micro-level it occurs in our daily lives. On a macro-level, nations find political reasons to avoid relief. The Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, recently Syria- the messenger is now real-time electronic, but the result continues to be Jan Karski’s nightmare.